I’ve just been fortunate enough to discover the website of a really excellent wedding photographer, Jasmine Star.

I first discovered the wedding section of her blog www.jasminestarblog.com, and was just so impressed with the quality of her images, for each and every wedding collection she’s displayed.

They have a real truth, beauty, naturalness, art, and technical skill that I so rarely see combined by a single person. She’s clearly passionate about her work, and excellent at what she does. I’m sure she’ll have an incredible career ahead of her.

If you’re a particularly observant type, something you may notice from her wedding blog, is that the large selection of around 100 images displayed, are all just from the last few weeks! (whereas many photographic websites will only make available a very small selection from each event).

Very impressive, very inspirational, and well worth a look.

If you’re in the area, and/or can afford to fly her over for your wedding, it looks like money very well spent!

The US ‘director’ who had included one of my photos, against my permission, hadn’t just put them on YouTube, but iTunes, mySpace, blip.tv, vodpod.com, Facebook, and LiveLeak.com!

Every one of those websites has now thankfully removed the video in question (if you see it anywhere else, please do let me know).

Thankfully the ‘director’ has now also realised he was in the wrong (at least with my image), and has re-edited the video to miss out my image and a few others images by the looks of things.

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Other breaches of copyright on their own website:

In relation to the magazine wrongfully using my images on their website, without my permission:

The court hearing was yesterday, and in summary; their counter-claim was dismissed, and my claim was upheld in full.

This was on the basis of restrictive use of each image was clearly outlined prior to use, that the charges for unauthorised use were clearly published and referenced in the supply communications prior to use, and the invoice for unauthorised use was therefore completely valid.

The defendant has now therefore been ordered to pay the original invoice (£1,500+VAT for 3 images), plus interest, plus compensation, plus the legal and other costs incurred. (A total charge that is now nearly twice the price of what they could have paid, if paid promptly. Which of course is also significantly more than if they’d simply paid for and been granted permission in the first place!)

So if anyone reading this is thinking of using any images by Jason Parlour Photography without my written permission (and without paying the fee to do so), please do think again. I do take action, all the way to court.

I find it quite incredible some people’s misunderstandings of basic copyright, especially by those who are in supposed to be in the business professionally!

We’re currently taking further action against a UK magazine to whom we supplied a number of images under a very clearly restrictive usage licence for printed publication in a specific issue of the magazine. The magazine then went on to reproduce them on their website, against the clear limited permission granted, and then seemed shocked when we sent an invoice for their unauthorised use.

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Then over the weekend, I was notified of a self-titled ‘producer/director’ in the USA (with 15 years in the business apparently), who copied another of our images, digitally removed the company logos, added his own logos instead, and used it in a ‘commercial parody’ to help promote his own services (combining it with a bunch of other videos and stills from other people, with his own voice-over).

Upon requesting that he remove the image from the video due to the clear breach of copyright, his incredulous response was:

Unfortunately, permission is not required under the United States Copyright Law’s doctrine labeled “Fair Use”. In short, The “fair use” exemption to (U.S.) copyright law was created to allow things such as commentary, parody, news reporting, research and education about copyrighted works without the permission of the author. That’s vital so that copyright law doesn’t block your freedom to express your own works , I will not remove the image from my ###### parody commercial.

Thankfully YouTube have upheld my request, and the entire video has now been taken offline with a credit to Jason Parlour Photography in its place.

It amazes me the way some people try to work, especially when the fees to legally reproduce my work is so accessible!

It was great to be invited to take official photos at the Pole Divas event in Manchester last week. There were once again some superb performances by all the performers (especially as it was the finals), and once again, lots of images were taken throughout the evening, and around 750 photos from the event can be seen on Flickr.

Here are a few of my highlights though:

This was taken just before Tamar’s performance, checking the pole for enough grip. I just really liked the naturalness of her smile in this photo (it was a great performance too!)The ‘Death Lay’ is a move that only last year, was VERY rarely seen in competitions or performances, but was performed by Pantera after the Miss Pole Dance UK Finals in 2008. However, this year, at least 4 performers included the move (to varying levels of success) in their routines! Very impressive.There were three levels within the competition, and this year the ‘professional’ section was one by the very lovely Annie Norris. Annie is someone I’ve been fortunate to work with on a large number of occasions through her support of the X-Pole. I love how really incredibly happy Annie was to have won this event, and how it fortunately showed in many of the photos from the evening.

Unfortunately, because of other commitments I was only able to make the final part of the event, however this was certainly very worthwhile attending, with some superb performances from some familiar faces, and some incredible new faces too.

I was very lucky with the lighting on this image of Faye Chatterley, especially with the uplighting on a member of the audience gazing at the performance.In this image, the resulting winner Maxine (Maria Betts) was just completing the final part of a ball drop from the top of the pole. It was great to get the expression of the audience within this one too.This was taken at the end of a great doubles entry by Deb Riley and Sasha Kavaleva.After the end of the competition, last year’s Miss Pole Dance winner, Alesia Vazmitsel gave another superb performance. This particular move shown above, isn’t normally my preferred body angle for Pole photos, however the incredible strength and flexibility of this move makes it pretty special, and so well worth posting regardless.

If you’d like to see the rest of the images from the evening, a little over 600 images can be viewed through the full collection on Flickr.

If you’d like to purchase any images, please do so via the normal payment page.